Fireside by Susan Wiggs (pdf e book reader txt) 📗

He didn’t react. In sleep, his face looked completely relaxed and unguarded. Boyish and vulnerable. The crush she had on him didn’t go away. It intensified.

Very gently, she laid her head back down on his chest. “I am in such trouble,” she whispered, drawing the quilt up over them both.

Bo dreamed he’d had his arm amputated. His left arm. His pitching arm. And in the dream, it just wasn’t that big a deal. So this was not some athlete-losing-his-gift dream. It was something else. What, he wasn’t sure.

He awakened slowly, hugging his soft pillow closer as though to keep himself in the grip of an incredibly relaxing moment. No bed had ever felt so warm or soft or—

A breathy female sigh drifted from the pillow, snuffing out the amputated-arm dream. A moment later, he was wide-eyed, fully awake.

Dang. He’d fallen asleep. How the hell had that happened? He finally got Kimberly van Dorn in bed with him, and he’d fallen asleep immediately. He couldn’t even blame it on the drinking, not this time. They’d each had a glass of schnapps, not a sip more.

His left arm—his pitching arm—was leaden, completely numb.

He gently lifted his head from the pillow and saw the reason. Kim lay sleeping in the crook of his arm, her cheek against his chest and her hand splayed over the flat of his stomach.

Well now, he thought. This was a first for him. He’d never slept with a woman without sleeping with her.

Now here was Kimberly, fast asleep in his arms. She’d been thoroughly kissed by him, but that was all. Not a damned thing more.

He couldn’t believe it. That was just purely wrong. No way around it. She’d given him his chance, and he’d—good Lord almighty—fallen asleep. And with Kimberly, of all people. The one woman he wanted to stick around. Generally, the women in his life were temporary wayfarers. There would usually be wine, a few laughs and the sex, of course. But inevitably, they would figure some things out about him. And then, of course, they would leave. He hadn’t blown a chance like this since…

He found himself remembering a certain day in April when he was fourteen years old. He had been home alone as usual that day. His mom was at her job—that year she was selling Mary Kay cosmetics, and she traveled around the suburbs with a tackle box of samples in the trunk of her car. Stoney had been off somewhere with his latest sugar mama. That was what Stoney called the women he dated who were older than him, women who cheerfully gave him money and let him drive their Cadillacs or HumVees anytime he wanted.

That long-ago April day, his mom’s friend, Shasta Jamison, stopped by, the way she sometimes did. Shasta and Trudy went way back, or so they said, but when Bo asked what that meant, they just said, “We’ve known each other forever.”

Shasta was pretty in a weary, too-many-cigarettes way, with yellow hair and a good figure. She always seemed a little sad to Bo. A little lonely. She sometimes had a suspicious-looking bruise on her face, and maybe she moved slowly because her ribs were sore. She was a fool for love, that was the way Bo’s mother put it. She tended to go out with guys who roughed her up.

That day she had on a long-sleeved sweatshirt even though it was hot and muggy outside. The skintight sweatshirt was unzipped to show off a red bikini top stretched taut across her amazing boobs. They glowed softly with a suntan, creating a deep cleavage that made his mouth water.

Reminding himself not to stare, he turned down the music and said, “My mom’s not here. I don’t know when she’ll be back.”

“Oh. I got time,” Shasta said. “I’ll just wait for her.”

“Um, okay. It might be a while.”

“Don’t mind me,” she said. “Just go on with what you were doing.”

Right, like he could do that. He’d been reading a book on sports psychology about Nolan Ryan and listening to the Talking Heads turned up loud. It would be rude to do that with Shasta around.

“I wasn’t doing anything.” His gaze slipped, and he quickly corrected himself, hoping she hadn’t noticed.

She noticed. She slid the zipper of her sweatshirt down another inch or two. “It’s okay for you to look,” she said, taking a step closer to him. “I don’t mind.”

She was trouble. He didn’t have to be a genius to realize that. Even so, he couldn’t keep himself from staring at her. She liked it, too, letting him know by trailing her hand down her arm and then back up, briefly touching her lower lip.

“It’s okay to touch, too.” She moved in even closer.

“Ma’am, I—”

“Don’t ma’am me. It makes me feel old. I don’t like feeling old.”

“Yes, m—yes, okay.” His voice was husky, yet due to nerves, it squeaked on the ends of his words.

She smiled and rested her hand on his chest, then went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. He caught the cindery scent of cigarettes smoked hours ago, mingling with the flavor of a more recent breath mint. The smell of her, combined with the feathery action of her lips moving across his cheek, was so sexy his knees almost buckled.

“So tall,” she murmured. “You’ve grown so tall.”

As though she could read his mind, she chuckled and gave him a gentle shove toward his bedroom. It was small but he kept his side neat because he hated losing stuff. He had his Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson posters on the wall, and his Little League trophies lined up on a shelf over the bed.

Shasta kissed him full on the mouth, her tongue startling in its quickness as it darted invitingly past his lips. Bo caught on fire, every nerve ending flaring up with a need he’d never felt before. Light-fingered, her hands traced the shape of his shoulders and headed downward, circling the waistband